The national charity for new music

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Location: LondonDeadline: Closed

Irresistible Demands of the Flesh by Laura Bowler, Kaleidoscope by Yuko Ohara and Digital Dust by Jack White will be premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Garry Walker, on Friday 17th February 2012, 19:00. BBC Maida Vale Studios.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra have offered a series of workshops with selected Embedded applicants, and the possibility of a concert performance and broadcast of their final work. Five composers were chosen to take part in the first round of the project, a 1-day workshop held on 18th April 2011: Laura Bowler, Martin Georgiev, Claudia Molitor, Yuko Ohara and Jack White. All of them worked closely with composer-mentor Peter Wiegold.

Laura, Yuko and Jack attended another workshop on 1st November 2011 and are looking forward to rehearsals on 15th & 16th February 2012 and the premiere of their new works, conducted by Garry Walker at Maida Vale Studios on 17th February 2012, to be broadcast on Radio 3. Full concert programme information and ticket booking information can be found here.

The project offers significant scope for the composers' professional development, including:

- Opportunity to develop a work for full orchestra over sustained period through a series of workshops prior to rehl/performance, enabling participants to try out new ideas

- Open access to all BBC SO rehearsals and performances as opportunity to observe, get to know orchestra’s work and team

- One-to-one access with players in a closed environment to explore and try out material and techniques (within rehearsal time)

- Opportunity to shadow broadcasting teams

- Opportunity to observe BBC SO’s outreach work

- Bursary towards time and writing

Jack White comments on his experience with the BBC SO so far:

The embedded project has been a fantastic opportunity to experiment with orchestration. Using the mentoring support of the project I have been able to guide my composition into new artistic realms. I have been impressed at the resources of the project: a whole hour with a professional orchestra is an amazing investment in my artistic development. The BBC have been very welcoming and helpful in organising contact time with their players.

Exploring acoustic versions of electronic effects is still the driving force behind my piece. I was glad that some of the more experimental textures of my piece worked out in the rehearsal. In fact, the orchestra handled them so well I shall have to think of even stranger sounds for them to make at the next session! It is brilliant that we can go back to the score and revise sections for the next session. I am looking forward to exploring 'time-stretching' in the next section of the piece, using all the helpful feedback from the previous performance.

I have been lucky enough to help out with a BBC outreach project, as part of BBC's 'Total Immersion' weekend of Peter Eotvos. I enjoyed helping a school's laptop orchestra get to grips with the music and the technology of the project. There was also an ensemble of folk instrumentalists and players from the BBC SO who I got to know well. It was very rewarding to be able to help during the rehearsals and very encouraging to be given musical responsibilities during the performance. I'm grateful to SAM for nominating me for an outreach project which was directly linked with my own research and musical interests.